


Turning Points — The Burning of the Quill

by Idle_Hans



Series: AU is a Measure of Distance [7]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-11-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:35:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27375793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Idle_Hans/pseuds/Idle_Hans
Summary: Tom Marvolo Riddle never received admission to Hogwarts, nor ever learned the place existed.Somewhere there's a world where the blood purist agenda didn't wait for some upstart Son of a Squib to set it in motion.
Series: AU is a Measure of Distance [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1799656
Kudos: 11





	Turning Points — The Burning of the Quill

**Phineas Nigellus Black** — the most notorious headmaster in the entire history of Hogwarts.

**Phineas Nigellus Black** — the malefactor who destroyed two priceless artefacts, and nine hundred years of tradition before the ink was dry on his employment contract. The sun had not set on his first day in office when he gathered together the Quill of Acceptance, the Book of Admittance, and all the ancient documents describing their construction and enchantment, and cast fiendfyre upon them.

" _Those who would have their children attend this school may present them for the approval of the Sorting Hat as foreign families have always done. The Hat knows a squib when it's placed on the head of one._ "

So Phineas told the board of governors, some of whom were aghast, and some shocked but secretly pleased.

" _Let the Ministry sponsor such mudblood children as they happen to stumble across, if it pleases them to do so, but the age of our scouring the land for every last speck of magical dirt is over._

" _It is a done thing._ "

* * *

Tom Marvolo Riddle never received admission to Hogwarts, nor ever learned the place existed. Perversely, the more magically adept a child, the younger they're likely to realise they themself are the cause of the odd things happening. The earlier such a discovery, the more their 'accidental' magic tends to be semi-controlled, and consequently less _loud_ in the way which attracts the attention of the ministry scryers who inform the obliviators and accidental magic reversal squad.

What skills Riddle did acquire were entirely self-taught by trial and error, and specialised in dominating or hurting other people. In time he might have made something of himself in the muggle underworld, had he not been killed by a V-2 rocket when it fell without warning onto a crowded shopping street in October 1944.

* * *

Myrtle Warren had a miserable time of it at Bournemouth Girls' Grammar School, though her principal tormentors did occasionally seem to suffer the most dreadful bad luck. Her perpetual moodiness cleared up when her spots did; but poetic justice — at least as she saw it — never quite ceased to swing its sword on her behalf.

* * *

Rubeus Hagrid nearly managed to get himself expelled from Hogwarts when a pair of third-years looking for somewhere to hide contraband stumbled onto — or into — the dungeon where his pet acromantula was lurking. As if the werewolf cubs hadn't been enough! Young Rubeus was permitted to continue his education only in exchange for an binding vow not to take up with any more creatures for the remainder of his school years. It almost broke him.

On graduating, he applied to the Hidden Mountain Dragon Reserve in Wales. The administrators weighed his stature, strength, enthusiasm, and obvious love for large dangerous animals, against his even more obvious lack of common sense. But, as someone said, " _We're wizardfolk. What did common sense ever do for us?_ "

They hired Hagrid and he never looked back.

* * *

Andromeda Black would never meet a boy called Ted Tonks. She found other ways to rebel against her family, though never succeeded in leaving them behind.

* * *

It's no mystery at all why Eileen Snape took the Evans girls to be Hat-tested along with her son. A cabal of philanthropists had been persuaded by an eminent arithmancer and genealogist that a continued influx of newcomers to wizarding society, however distasteful, was necessary in order to bolster the population against an otherwise inevitable slow decline, and they offered a small purse of galleons to any witch or wizard who successfully unearthed a muggle-raised magical child overlooked by distant relatives or the ministry. If even half of what Severus had to say about Lily was true, the girl was money in the vault.

As for the sister, it was a much longer shot that the Hat would accept her as well, but getting parental permission to take _both_ girls on a bus outing was easier than just one, and if Petunia turned out to be worthless, what did it matter? Eileen could cast a _Tacitus_ quite well, thank you. Let the brat fume all she liked — she wouldn't be saying anything to anyone.

* * *

Little Hermione Granger's first toddler tantrum in a public place required two reversal officers and four obliviators to clean up the mess. Upon returning to the ministry, the junior reverser's cheerful, " _So, are we going to enrol her, then?_ ", was met with several dirty looks and a muttered, " _She'll blow up London one day if we don't._ "

* * *

And beneath the castle, the basilisk continued to slumber.

**Author's Note:**

> About Tom:  
>  Germany's bombing campaigns against London had a tendency to run from autumn to spring, and then lay off during the summer. Only the V-1 attacks from June 1944 to March 1945 break this pattern. The Tom Riddle of canon would have seen the wreckage when he went home at the end of each school year but, assuming he remained at Hogwarts over the winter and spring breaks — as any sensible person would do in his circumstances — only in the summer of 1944 was he in any direct danger; unlike the Tom Riddle of this AU who was evacuated in the first Blitz, but then hastily dispatched back to Wool's Orphanage by his horrified billeting hosts at the first possible opportunity. He was stranded in London thereafter.


End file.
